7/6/09

One of the things I have noticed in all of our texts; books and movies included, is all are based out of California, mainly Los Angeles, except for City of Glass; which is based out of New York. I just find it interesting because in each of the texts we have studied, they depict some sort of variation of a hardboiled detective story. To me Los Angeles, California is the prime stereotypical location for most crime plots based off of the neo-noir era. It fits it perfectly because it was the center of the beginning of growth and crime at that time period; anything was possible. The last two texts we are studying; Gun, With Occasional Music and Blade Runner are heavily influenced by both neo-noir and science fiction. I feel as though these two texts are placed best in the final studies because they are so abstract from the earlier text we have studied. Gun, With Occasional Music is extremely odd and abstract to me and Blade Runner just reeks of the 80’s. Even though both plots are depicted in the advanced future, you still get a good feel of the hardboiled detective from the main character. The first four texts we have studies rely heavily on the American neo-noir, hardboiled detective story line. It seems as though Raymond Chandler was one of the godfathers of this stylized writing and I enjoyed that we started with his book first. Stepping next into Paul Auster’s postmodernist style into finally the science fiction influenced texts.

-Erin L.